Wednesday March 24 is 2010’s Back Up Your Birth Control NYC Day of Action, hosted by an organization I love to talk about on Women’s Glib — NARAL Pro-Choice NY. Shira and I participated in the Day last year and had a blast. During the event, volunteers stand outside NYC subway stations, handing out free condoms and information about emergency contraception. (This is an especially fun way to volunteer since you’ll get virtually no backlash — in my experience, everyone loves a free condom.) You can join a group of NARAL volunteers at certain stations, or organize at your own stop — it’s up to you (they’re big on choice at NARAL).

Here are the deets for this year’s event:

BACK UP YOUR BIRTH CONTROL NYC DAY OF ACTION
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Create your own shift anytime between 7:30am — 7:30pm

If you are organizing at your own subway stop, please RSVP by Wednesday, March 17 to ensure that there is enough time for us to mail you the materials and condoms. NARAL staff will bring materials for all those joining us in Union Square or Herald Square.

Do you know about Feminist Review? It’s pretty great: A collective of twenty editors and 200 writers that review everything from films to fashion, tunes to text.

Valentine’s Day marked the start of their month-long fundraising campaign, I ♥ FR. The goal is to raise $5,000 –- the entire year’s expenses –- in order to keep the blog running.

From an email:

Founded in 2006 by longtime activist and media professional Mandy Van Deven, Feminist Review is an entirely volunteer-run forum where readers discuss books, music, film, and other products from feminist perspectives. “Like many independent media projects, the loss of ad revenue has caused us to dip heavily into our savings. Now, despite the fact that the number of visitors to our site has doubled in the past year, we’re teetering toward going into the red,” informs Van Deven. “The I ♥ FR campaign is reaching out to those new readers to ask them to help us survive this recession. If just 50 people commit to making a monthly donation of $10 for the remainder of the year, we will meet our goal.”

The campaign has already raised $530.

Please consider donating to keep Feminist Review — a publication that “prides itself in being a non-traditional, woman-centered, inclusionary resource for readers around the globe” — alive. For more information and to donate, check out the campaign information here.

It has come to my attention that there is a Facebook fan page entitled, “Killing your hooker so you don’t have to pay her.” The page boasts such updates as, “Ever stab your hooker with a blunt object to add insult to injury?” The page was created about a month ago.

And, as of today, it has 22,127 fans.

This is a deeply offensive, misogynistic, and outright violent page. Hypothetical violence is not funny, but real violence is even less amusing — and this violence is real. The murder of sex workers is frighteningly commonplace, and all too often is excused under some bullshit pretense that sex workers are expendable, are unhuman.

We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.

…We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.

Facebook pages like this one are surely a form of entertainment, of shits and giggles, for those involved. For the sex workers who are killed for no other reason than hatred, the amusement fades.

This “entertainment” is what happens when people hate women, hate sex workers, and see violence as a viable solution to their rage.

DON’T throw out your student MetroCards that expired today! The NYC Student Union (a badass bunch, if you’re unfamiliar with their work) is organizing a creative protest of the deplorable proposal to cut student MetroCard funding.

This Monday, we are getting new student MetroCards from our schools. This gives us students a chance to use our old metrocards to make a statement to the State and to the MTA.

Use a permanent marker to write your own message to the MTA and the State about them cutting student MetroCards. Whether it is about you, a friend, or a family member, make sure to let them know how losing student MetroCards will impact your life. The NYC Student Union is organizing to collect either in or in front of your school. We are then going to use them as written testimonies at a public hearing this March. This is our chance to give a voice to students like us who are going to be heavily affected by this. However, please keep these messages clean, polite, and serious. This IS NOT meant to be an attack on the MTA. If we can get enough MetroCards, we can give the city a short look at how badly these budget cuts will hurt students and their families, and we can really make a difference.

Join us for the Reproductive Health Act (Phone) Call to Action. We will educate our members and supporters on the bill and share opportunities for all pro-choice New Yorkers — from Buffalo to Staten Island — to get involved.

Wednesday, January 27
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Call in toll-free from anywhere in New York State

RSVP to Lalena Howard at lhoward@prochoiceny.org or 646-520-3506 today. Conference call number, agenda and materials will be provided when you RSVP.

I wrote last week about the Metro Transit Authority’s truly frightening proposal to cut funding for student MetroCards.

As I said before, this is an extreme act of classism and environmental racism that threatens to make each kid’s human right to education even less attainable than it already is for many children.

The proposal would also eliminate 2 subway lines and 21 bus routes, cut service on many other bus and subway lines, and phase out the Access-A-Ride program, a vital resource for many New Yorkers with disabilities.

Sign this online petition, sponsored by the New York City Council, to demand that the MTA continue to fund these important programs and implement a more transparent budget process.